


Peter Parker's Pickle Predicament

by dontmockmyawkwardness



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Gen, Irondad, Irondad Fic Exchange 2020, Pickle Ornaments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28164129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontmockmyawkwardness/pseuds/dontmockmyawkwardness
Summary: Peter Parker takes it upon himself to bring Christmas cheer to New York City this year. It's all fun and games until he finds himself in a sticky situation in the middle of Rockefeller Plaza. Can an old man in a red suit fly in and help save Christmas?
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22
Collections: Irondad Fic Exchange 2020





	Peter Parker's Pickle Predicament

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pawprinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pawprinter/gifts).



> A Christmas gift for Pawprinter. Based on the prompt: Tony catches Peter doing something that Peter considered embarrassing—awkward reassurances and bonding follow. 
> 
> If you don't know what a Christmas Pickle is, please look it up! Quick intro here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pickle

“Is this the last box?”

“Yep,” Peter set the cardboard box down atop the small pyramid of boxes covering their living room. The sprawling pyramid would’ve been enough to make moving around the room hard even without the lopsided Christmas tree overflowing from the corner where it was propped, but as it was, there was hardly any space left to walk on the floor.

Luckily, Peter could walk on the ceiling instead.

Peter dropped down from the ceiling, settling neatly next to May on the couch. “Ornaments or lights?” he asked.

May cocked her head. “Are you actually offering to untangle the lights?”

“God no! You couldn’t pay me to try untangling that mess!”

Peter tried to hop off the couch, but May tugged him back down. “But you’re Spider-Man! Is this not a friendly neighborhood problem?”

Peter smiled and gave May a kiss on her cheek.

“Sorry, May, but I think that’s a bit below Spider-Man’s pay-grade.” He sprung up to the ceiling and crawled over to the other side of the pyramid before May could drag him back. As he dropped down in front of the ornament boxes, he looked over to May and smiled, “Don’t worry though, Spider-Man can still help you place the star on top of the tree!”

***

Growing up, the holidays were always a festive time in the Parker household. A strange combination of Hanukkah and Christmas that always left the three of them full of laughter, memories, and cookies.

But last year, neither May nor Peter had felt much like celebrating. Instead they spent the holidays curled under a blanket together, binge-watching Netflix to avoid acknowledging the hole in their hearts.

Peter honestly expected this year to pass in much the same way, so he was surprised when May burst into his room one morning with a list of decorations she needed from the storage closet.

He looked her in the eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

May nodded. “I’m not letting another holiday pass without laughing with you.” She smiled and then turned on her heel out of the room. “Hurry up, you have a lot of boxes to get!”

***

And that’s how Peter found himself pulling a small worn box from the pile he was currently digging in. Peering through the plastic siding, he could see a glitter of green inside.

Cradling the ornament box in his hands, Peter looked up toward May. Her glasses were sliding down her nose as she continued to untangle the mess of lights. “Hey, May,” Peter called over.

May paused, pushed her glasses further up her nose, and looked up. “Yeah?”

Peter held up the ornament box. “It’s the pickle.”

“Oh,” May sighed, smiling softly.

“Ben always hid it.”

“Yeah, and you and I would race each other to try and find it.”

“It wasn’t much of a race,” Peter laughed. “Didn’t I win every year?”

“Only because I let you!”

Peter gasped. “You did not!“

“I had to. It’s the only way you would’ve found it,” May laughed. “In fact, I remember one year you were convinced it was in the kitchen when it was just behind the TV, so Ben moved it under the kitchen table one night. You were so proud when you found it because your gut told you to look there!”

They dissolved into a fit of laughter. Even Peter could admit that maybe his intuition wasn’t that reliable when he was seven.

May removed her glasses and wiped at her eyes. “Why don’t you hide the pickle this year?” she threw out offhandedly as she put her glasses back on.

“What? No. I don’t know where to hide it. Ben took all the good spots in here!”

“Peter, you’re Spider-Man. I’m sure you’ve found a good hiding spot or two for a pickle while you’ve been out swinging around.”

Peter looked down and turned the ornament over in his hands. “Would you be okay with that?” he asked quietly. “With me hiding the pickle this year?”

May was already turning back to the tangle of lights she had abandoned earlier. “Of course,” she easily replied. “As long as I can find it.”

***

May found the pickle within six hours. She dropped the ornament into Peter’s lap with the advice, “The fire escape’s a bit obvious, hon.”

***

The second time Peter hid the pickle, he thought for sure that May wouldn’t check the flagpole outside the hospital. But he was sorely mistaken when May handed the pickle back to him the next day.

***

The third time Peter hid the pickle, May didn’t find it. Instead, he found a young girl trying to pluck it off the chain link fence near the neighborhood basketball court. She had just unhooked the ornament when Peter landed softly next to her.

“I found a pickle!” She held the sparkling ornament up to Spider-Man’s face.

Peter smiled. “That’s not any ordinary pickle.” He leaned in close and mock-whispered in her ear. “That’s a special Spider-Man pickle.”

The girl’s eyes widened in surprised. “This is your pickle?”

Peter nodded. The girl looked down to the ornament and then back to the masked hero crouched in front of her. “Then why is it green?”

Peter’s face scrunched up in confusion for about half a second before realization hit him. “Do you think the pickle should be red and blue like me?” he asked.

“Yeah! Then it can be a Spider-Pickle!”

“That’s a great idea,” Peter smiled behind the mask. “Do you think I could take this pickle home with me so I can, um, Spider-fy it?”

The girl grinned and handed the pickle ornament to Spider-Man. “Make sure it still sparkles!”

“Of course it will have sparkles!” Peter thanked the girl and gave her a big high-five. As he turned to shoot his web, he noticed the group of boys who had been playing basketball all staring at him. He even saw a cell phone pointed in his direction. _Great_ – he thought as he swung away – _this is probably going on Twitter._

***

Peter’s initial plan was to just paint the original pickle ornament. But when he sat down with the paint in hand, he couldn’t bring himself to actually alter Ben’s original pickle. And so Peter found himself spending the evening going to thrift stores and second-hand stores all across Queens collecting more pickles.

(By the end of the night, he had a pile of painted pickles.)

And as he had predicted, a video of Spider-Man holding a pickle in front of the little girl went viral on Twitter a day later. Besides some ridiculous slander from the usual critics - _“Spider-Menace steals pickle from innocent girl!”_ – people seemed excited about the possibility of pickles peppered around the city. There was even a Twitter account documenting where each pickle was found.

Peter worried that all the attention was going to upset May, but when he brought it up to her, she simply laughed. “You’re going to have to try harder than that to make me jealous.”

“Is that a challenge?” Peter asked.

May gave him a _look_ and bit back a smile. And Peter’s smile grew three sizes in return.

***

Peter’s pickle problems continued to grow as December passed. Instead of paying attention in class, he would scroll through Twitter, checking if anyone had found his latest hidden present. During patrol, Peter keep his eyes peeled for any potential hiding spots, making a note with Karen if he did.

The Christmas pickles were plaguing Peter’s thoughts so pervasively that he couldn’t even properly focus on the schematics that Tony had him looking over. What was supposed to be a normal Friday afternoon of “interning” in Tony’s workshop, had turned into Peter staring at Google Maps, trying to plan his next hiding spot.

In fact, it took Tony almost an hour to realize something was off. Ever since the disastrous Homecoming fiasco, Tony had been trying to be more hands-on with the young genius. He had programmed Friday to keep track of Spider-Man’s mentions in the news and would send the kid a congratulatory text on a job well done. Tony had even made the “internship” and actual internship, giving Peter equations to solve, papers to read, and even some small engineering projects to work on during their weekly lab sessions. Tony was being a great mentor, if he did say so.

But that afternoon, it didn’t seem like Tony’s _absolutely riveting_ server blueprints were occupying the kid. Peter was staring at the computer screen, completely engrossed in whatever was probably rotting his brain.

How rude!

Tony slipped around to Peter’s desk. He planned on just casually peeking over his shoulder, very nonchalant, and then moving on further into the lab. Tony didn’t plan on lingering - he wasn’t trying to “tiger mom” this whole mentorship gig – but then he actually saw what Peter was looking at.

“Peter, why are you looking at metal bull balls?”

Peter spun around and slammed the screen shut. “Nothing!”

“Look, I’m not judging,” Tony shrugged, playing it cool. “God knows what my search history looks like. I’m just wondering how that can be more interesting than working with Iron Man?”

“It’s for an art project.” Peter said, which didn’t answer the question.

“An art project?”

“Yeah, it’s, umm, a project about New York monuments.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yeah, it’s, you know, really interesting.”

There was a beat of silence. Peter avoided Tony’s eyes.

“And this monument is…”

“It’s the Charging Bull statue. In the Financial District.”

Tony stared at Peter. Peter shifted in his chair but didn’t elaborate any more. Eventually Tony shrugged and turned back to his desk. “Shame it isn’t an engineering project, I could’ve helped you.”

Peter relaxed back into his seat. “Thank you for offering, Mr. Stark, but I’ll be okay.”

“I have no doubt, kid,” Tony settled back into his chair and began flipping through his papers again. _Yep_ , he thought to himself, _handled that like a champ._

***

Tony stepped out of the side door of the nondescript building, sliding his sunglasses on and pulling his hat down further. Even though the last place anyone would suspect to see Iron Man was just off a side street in Flushing, it didn’t mean Tony could let his guard down. Hunters with cell phones were everywhere, and he didn’t need the front page to be covered with the salacious headline “Tony Stark Goes to Therapy – Is He Officially Crazy?”

Because he wasn’t crazy. Just traumatized. As his therapist took frequent care in reminding him.

But because this latest trip had been rescheduled four different times, Happy wasn’t waiting around back with the car running and a warm cup of coffee in hand. Tony reached for his phone, because luckily he was close enough for another certain someone to swing by and pick him up.

“Where are you?”

_“Umm, Mr. Stark?”_

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” Tony quipped, leaning back against the brick wall.

_“Oh – I – Umm, what’s going on?”_

“I’m in the neighborhood, kid, and thought you could swing by, I could buy you some food, we could chit, we could chat, and then you can swing me back to the Tower. Sound good?”

Peter paused on the other end. _“Do you not have your suit?”_

“What, I can’t do something nice and spontaneous with you?” Tony grumbled.

_“I mean, of course you can, Mr. Stark! But you didn’t answer the question.”_ Peter trailed off.

“Look, you’ll see my suit if I have to fly out to you instead of you coming to me. So cut to the chase – are you webbing your way over here or not?”

_“Umm…”_ There’s another lengthy pause.

“Peter,” Tony warns.

_“Sorry, I’m in class right now?”_

“I know you’re on winter break – try again, kid.”

_“It’s for extra credit?”_

Now Tony was just insulted. He switched the call to his earpiece and began pulling up the suit’s tracker on his phone. “Now you’re insulting my intelligence. Alright, I have your location, looks like I’m coming to you.”

_“Oh no, Mr. Stark! You really don’t have to!”_

“Clearly I do, Pete, because something must be really wrong if you’re passing up the opportunity to spend quality time with me. Do you know how many people would pay to spend the afternoon with Tony Stark? And here I am, being so selfless – Oh! Found you.” Tony did a double take at his phone. “You’re in Rockefeller Plaza?”

_“No, no, I am definitely not there! Besides, even if I was there, there’s really no reason for you to come here because there’s nothing interesting happening whatsoever.”_

“Too late,” Tony was already ducking into an alley, his armor forming around him. “Already on my way, buckaroo.” The last thing Tony heard was a distant protest before his helmet slid shut, the call disconnected, and he took off into the New York sky.

***

Tony had arrived at Rockefeller Plaza, expecting to see Peter standing among the crowd of people or perhaps even ice-skating. Instead a scan showed that Peter wasn’t in the plaza at all. He was in the Christmas tree itself.

Tony turned on steal mode, making his suit near invisible as he flew closer to the tree. None of the holiday tourists noticed him, and he flew between two branches to sneak into the tree.

And upon reaching the trunk, he immediately wished he hadn’t. Because at the center of the enormous tree was a spider tangled in a web.

More accurately, Spider-Man was tangled in his own web.

Tony was still staring in awe when a voice called out, “Hi Mr. Stark! Lovely weather we’re having!”

“Can you even tell what the weather is all the way in here?”

“Umm, no actually. I just thought it was a good conversation starter.”

Tony landed gently on the branch next to the stuck superhero and lowered his faceplate. With his own two eyes, he could see that Peter’s right hand was stuck to the trunk of the tree with an impressive amount of web. “Well, how about we have a conversation about how you webbed yourself to a Christmas tree?”

“Oh, that.” With his left hand, Peter pulled off his mask. He met Tony’s eyes. “It’s a long story.”

“Humor me.”

“Well, I was trying to web something else, but the lights threw off my aim and I ended up hitting my hand instead. And now I’m stuck here till the web dissolves.”

“What were you trying to web? Was there a criminal hiding here first?”

“Not exactly,” Peter winced. He motioned to his stuck hand. Tony raised his eyebrows, but still reached his hand over to Peter’s. He pried in between his fingers and pulled out the object.

“Is this a … pickle?”

Peter nodded. “A Spider-Pickle, technically.”

“I’m confused. Why do you have a pickle ornament and why is it painted like Spider-Man.”

Peter looked down and sighed. “I collected a bunch of these ornaments from thrift stores and painted them. I’ve been hiding them around the city for people to find.”

“And why a pickle?” Tony asked.

“We’ve always hidden a pickle. Well, Ben always hid a pickle in the apartment growing up. He was great at it. May and I would spend days searching every nook and cranny for it. And once I found it, because I always found it first, Ben would pick me up and let me put it on top of the tree.”

Peter trailed off. Tony sat on his branch, patiently waiting for Peter to continue.

“I guess I didn’t realize how much I missed looking for the pickle until we didn’t hide it. I mean, we didn’t do anything for the holidays anyways last year, but when I found the pickle ornament this year, it hit me how much I always looked forward to it. Ben always found the most creative hiding spots, and even when I was sure I knew all the places, he would find somewhere new.

“The hunt was so fun, so when May suggested that I hid the pickle this year, I wanted to make it that fun for her too. Turns out she has always been a much better seeker than I was, so she found my first few hiding spots immediately. But then a little kid found my pickle. And she was so happy when she found it! And I looked at her and I saw me. I wanted to give her the same joy I had during Christmas, and if I could do that by hiding a simple pickle, then I would do that.”

Suddenly the lab incident made much more sense. "Let me guess, you hid a pickle on the Charging Bull," Tony realized.

Peter just grinned. Cheekily, he shrugged his shoulders. Tony sighed, certain he would find pictures of a Spider-Pickle dangling between the legs of the bull statue on Twitter later. This kid was going to be the death of him.

“And now you’re stuck in a tree?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

Peter let out a short laugh. “Yeah, now I’m stuck in a tree. I wanted the final pickle to be on the tree. Easier said than done, though.”

Tony turned the ornament over in his hands. Then he activated the gauntlet on his hand. He leaned over, placed the hook of the ornament on the branch, and then carefully melted the hook into the branch with his finger. When he pulled back, the pickle was dangling perfectly amongst the needles of the tree.

“Unless you’re an Avenger,” Tony grinned.

Peter stared at the pickle. After a moment of silence, Peter groaned. “I guess this is why I’ll never be an Avenger.” Peter gestures to his still imprisoned hand. “Real Avengers don’t get stuck in a freaking Christmas tree!”

“No, they don’t. An Avenger would never be caught dead in a Christmas tree.” Tony deadpans. “In fact, I think I’m losing Avenger cred just by sitting here.”

Peter snorts, but turns back to the trunk, gently hitting his forehead against it.

“No Avenger would ever be stuck here,” Tony continues, “because no Avenger would even think of doing something this silly just to make teenagers on Twitter smile. The Avengers are too concerned with alien invasions or worldwide coups to even think about the places they live or the people they pass on the street. But not you. You’re different, Peter. You see people getting joy out of a game of hide-and-seek and you throw yourself into it without abandon. You’ve built this elaborate game, spanning all across the city, just because it made people happy. Hell, you essentially created a cult around pickles!”

Peter laughed and looked up toward Tony. His eyes were big, filled with yearning and pleading and wanting to hear more of what Tony was saying, and Tony was struck with the realization that Peter looked up to him in ways he wasn’t sure he deserved.

“You’re not an Avenger because you’re better than the Avengers. Your heart and your light shine so much brighter. You use your gifts purely for good, Peter, and that is something to be admired. I never want you to think that making someone happy isn’t important. And I never want you to think that you aren’t a superhero just because you aren’t saving the world every day.”

Tony noticed that the webbing on Peter’s hand was finally dissolving, but Peter didn’t seem to care. Instead he seemed deep in his own thoughts.

“You really think I’m making a difference?” he finally asked.

“You’re flying around in a red suit bringing joy to everyone in the city! If that isn’t the Christmas spirit, then I don’t know what is.”

Peter crouched onto the branch, his hand finally free. “Are you saying I’m Santa Claus, Mr. Stark?”

Tony barked out a laugh. “Ha! No. If anything you’re an overeager elf.” Tony also straightened up, the armor sliding back into place. Peter was pulling on his mask again. “But maybe you can be a Santa-in-training and help deliver presents to all the nice kids in New York.”

Even behind the mask, Tony could see Peter’s beaming smile. “You would help me hide more pickles?”

Tony laughed. “I’ll leave the pickles to the professional here. But between my money and your endless desire to be the sappiest person alive, I’m sure Iron Man and Spider-Man can bring Christmas cheer to all the good boys and girls!”

Peter whooped as he leapt from the tree, a present-delivery plan already in place. And behind him, the painted pickle sparkled splendidly, patiently waiting to be found.


End file.
